In a message dated 10/6/2000 10:51:22 AM Pacific Daylight Time, DNAunion
writes:
> >FMAJ: Can you provide us with the steps involved in the evolution of an
> intelligently designed system?
>
> DNAunion: Sure, but I suppose you mean a biolgoical IC system
> specifically. I can provide you with great detail - or point you to where
> there is great detail - of practically every step in the design and
> creation of a novel protein: that is step-be-step intelligent design of
> biological macromolecules. If you are interested, there is (or at least
> was) a journal called "Protein Engineering": it you can't find that, just
> do searches at www.ScienceMag.org or BMN (biomednet) etc.
>
Looking forward to some calculations/
>
> >FMAJ: Evolution is harldy that poorly defined.
>
> DNAunion: So provide for us the single, accurate, and universally-accepted
> definition of evolution.
>
> >FMAJ: Species are somewhat arbitrarily defined but that does not make
> these terms useless. They have very distinct definitions in various areas.
>
> DNAunion: So does intelligence. What's your point?
>
One has to avoid equivocation. That this can happen with terms like evolution
only strengthen my warnings.
> >FMAJ: Does ID include natural selection as an intelligent designer as
> follows from the thesis?
>
> DNAunion: As far as I know, that conclusion is Elsberry's only (with
> people like you just parroting it over and over ad nauseum): that
> conclusion has not been stated by Dembski and/or Behe, and it goes against
> Darwin's definition of NATURAL selection (if there truly is INTELLIGENCE
> and DESIGN involved).
>
Of course not. Wesley's conclusion shows that there are some real problems
with ID. That Dembski and Behe have not reached that conclusion is
irrelevant. Wesley's conclusions stand or fall on their own merrit.
> >FMAJ: They should not throw in the towel, they should define their terms to
> follow logically from their premises.
>
> DNAunion: So why haven't biologists done so? Why does one group consider
> viruses as living by their definition, while another group does not. And
> if we follow the long cell theory as a defintion of life, then a
> self-sustaining, self-
Irrelevant. Viruses being alive or not is hardly relevant for the existence
of viruses. The definition of ID is very relevant for the existence of ID in
nature. IDers claim that they can accurately infer intelligent design. If
however they cannot exclude natural selection as the intelligent designer
then either there is something really wrong with the ID argument or the
meaning of intelligent has a different meaning than commonly accepted.
[...]
As I said, it seems a double standard to require modern ID (which is probably
less than 10 years old) to have every
> one of its terms nailed down to a single universally-accepted definition,
> while allowing biology itself (which has thousands upon thousands or
> researchers working on it, and have been for many decades) to not even be
> able to meet that criteria for the single most important term in the study:
> LIFE.
>
>
Non sequitor. Whether or not viruses are alife is not very relevant to the
existence of viruses. But the meaning of intelligence is fundamentally
important to ID.
>> DNAunion: By the way, Darwin stated the term SPECIES was "wishy washy"
> (i.e., disputable). So shouldn't his theory of the origin of SPECIES -
> note the word - have been discarded immediately?
>
> >FMAJ: Non sequitor.
>
> DNAunion: Yes, Mr. Stuck Record.
>
> >FMAJ: But just out of curiosity, what did Darwin say and where?
>
> DNAunion: Find it yourself!
>
So not only a non sequitur but also an unsupported assertion.
> You asked me elsewhere to support what I said Darwin said about natural
> selection, I took 15 minutes or so finding the passage in the book where he
> discussed it, then another 10 or so typing and correcting typos in my text:
> and what did you do? Clipped it out, replaced it with something like
> [irrelevant] (or was it your new catch phrase, "non sequitor"?).
>
> What I said about Darwin's statements (that the term species is
> ill-defined) it correct - it is in his book: you go find it.
Avoidance duely noted. Two unsupported assertions now.
>
> >FMAJ: The steps needed to build a web are determined by strict rules and
> details that are followed. Such rules are also well captured in algorithms.
> Simple
> algorithms can generate some quite intricate "designs".
>
> For instance
>
> http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho44.htm
>
> " The Fibonacci series is a sequence of numbers where each number is the
> sum of the two previous numbers: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,... It is called after
> the
> thirteenth-century Florentine mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci who first
> defined it. A surprising fact is that the Fibonacci series can be found in
> the arrangement of leaves on the stem of higher plants. In the great
> majority of plants with spiral arrangement, the arrangement conforms to
> Fibonacci numbers [6]. Now this looks a perfect case of design [10]. Is it
> indeed a case of design according to Dembski's Explanatory Filter? Is it a
> contingent system? "
>
> DNAunion: Where are the probability calcuations? He is referencing
> Dembski's EF right? For example, how long is the Fibonacci sequence
> followed in the arrangement of leaves - 1, 1, 2, 3 or is it 1, 1, 2, 3, 5
> or does it go on for a total of 100 or 1000 numbers in the sequence? What
> is the probability of that sequence arising by purely random chance? Is
> there any REASON that the sequence MUST occur - are there vast many other
> "live" options that are excluded?
>
>
Do you understand the meaning of the question mark? How would one go about
deriving probabilities? How is Dembski's EF applied outside the realm of some
very simple examples?
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